Heiner's gone to his doc...for his nerves...that'll be funny after the fight we had last night. I did say to him at one point how am I ever supposed to look at him with loving eyes if I'm constantly having to tell him what to do and tell him off like he's a 7 year old...I think he understood what I meant.

Fynn and Cami are downstairs with Oma, Derry's going her homework here.

Holy crap I could never live where it is colder than here. Stay warm Jess.

Ok, kids are off to school :whew: and I have done a first pass in the basement to move all the stuff away from the suspect wall. I found out the giant workbench is not actually heavy, but was nailed into the "finished" wall. So after I wrestled it away, I could see the bench is probably not worth saving and can likely be chopped into smaller pieces and throw away. It's sad, I was really looking forward to having that ten foot long workspace but not if it may contain mold. It doesn't look moldy but it is apparent it has gotten wet a few times.

Behind it, the pegboard only goes on the top half of the wall, so I could sort of see what's going on there. I can't see where the leak is coming from, because that's behind the pegboard, but I can see it has been very minimal but long ongoing. The framing put up to hold the pegboard isn't even warped or look moldy, but I'm guessing to be safe it should go. The corner where the wall and the floor meet is got a thin line of mildew/mold. So I am guessing we will have to rip the framing/pegboard out, bleach the crap out of that stripe, and then paint over it all with waterproofing whatever it is you would paint on a cinderblock wall in a basement. The only fly in the ointment is there are three outlets on that wall, so we have to work around that, ugh.

Holy crap I could never live where it is colder than here. Stay warm Jess.

Ok, kids are off to school :whew: and I have done a first pass in the basement to move all the stuff away from the suspect wall. I found out the giant workbench is not actually heavy, but was nailed into the "finished" wall. So after I wrestled it away, I could see the bench is probably not worth saving and can likely be chopped into smaller pieces and throw away. It's sad, I was really looking forward to having that ten foot long workspace but not if it may contain mold. It doesn't look moldy but it is apparent it has gotten wet a few times.

Behind it, the pegboard only goes on the top half of the wall, so I could sort of see what's going on there. I can't see where the leak is coming from, because that's behind the pegboard, but I can see it has been very minimal but long ongoing. The framing put up to hold the pegboard isn't even warped or look moldy, but I'm guessing to be safe it should go. The corner where the wall and the floor meet is got a thin line of mildew/mold. So I am guessing we will have to rip the framing/pegboard out, bleach the crap out of that stripe, and then paint over it all with waterproofing whatever it is you would paint on a cinderblock wall in a basement. The only fly in the ointment is there are three outlets on that wall, so we have to work around that, ugh.

Well, in theory the rebar holes are not where the outlets are...but I won't know that for sure until I rip it out. The thing is when we rip it out, then we will have these outlets dangling down, yet another electrical code violation. When we had the other stuff ripped out it exposed all the other stuff too. So basically we need to cover all the walls back up with synthetic wall material (like pegboard made out of PVC or something) but I was hoping to get an electrician do some work on it before we covered it all up, because a lot of it looks DIY to me. But honestly nobody is going to be able to do much work down there until I purge like half the stuff.

That's the plan, Jen. Actually the electrical on that wall is probably fine as long as it isn't wet or damaged with age, it's the rest of the wonky wiring all over the place in the basement that is suspect. I think the original owner did everything right, it was when his daughter took over that every "improvement" looks like it was done by lobotomized monkeys. You know, expanding telephone, DSL, cable, ethernet, 20+ years after the fact then IDK what happened. There's all sorts over overhead lights and weirdness that is not original.

I went out to the chiro, and it dumped two inches of snow while I was out. I sent the kids to school without snow pants today because it had all melted and was only supposed to sprinkle with snow. Oh well, I guess they will learn not to complain when I tell them they are supposed to wear them, LOL.